Thursday, May 28, 2015

Once 'Father' and 'Son,' Now a Married Couple

Norman
MacArthur, left, and Bill Novak were married on Sunday after spending
more than a decade as father and son

A couple who were legally father and son for the last fifteen years had their adoption vacated and were married this week after 52 years together.

Norman
MacArthur, 74, and Bill Novak, 76, were married in Pennsylvania on
Sunday. The couple, who has been together since their 20s, registered as
domestic partners in New York City in 1994, but in 2000 they moved to
Erwinna, Penn., where domestic partnerships are not legally recognized.
“When we moved to Pennsylvania, we had both retired and we were of the
age where one begins to do estate planning,” MacArthur tells Yahoo
Parenting. “We went to a lawyer who told us Pennsylvania was never going
to allow same-sex marriage, so the only legal avenue we had in order to
be afforded any rights was adoption.”